Marshawn Lynch Hits Peak Beast Mode: NFL Heroes And Villains, Week 16

You can now add Lynch to the likes of Bill Belichick, Gregg Popovich, Rasheed Wallace, and numerous other sports luminaries throughout history who have found remarkably creative and taciturn methods for telling the media to fuck the fuck off. Here’s a transcript of Lynch’s postgame comments after his mysterious first quarter "upset stomach" (suspension) and miraculous "recovery" (lapse of suspension, fully healthy 79-yard touchdown run) against the Cardinals. You’ll be shocked to learn that a handful of "Hey, guy! I’m just trying to do my job!" media folks weren’t too pleased about Beast Mode’s antics, as seen here and here and here and here.

I’m gonna tell you something that you already knew: There is nothing worse than athletes talking. Nothing. In a perfect world, they are born without tongues. When I turn on sports radio and they have a local athlete on the phone, I lunge to change the channel. I will take hot caller takes all day over Crazy Ira And The Douche yukking it up with the Redskins’ third-string fullback. It’s like connecting a Shopvac to both of my ears. The vast, vast, vast majority of athletes never have anything useful to say, ever. They are boring and dumb, and the media should give Marshawn Lynch a goddamn medal for giving them all the column inches they could possibly need to write a "Marshawn Lynch is good but highly unprofessional!" take. The man runs his ass off and spares the world from yet another postgame press conference. We should give him a Nobel.

VILLAIN: Chip Kelly and the Eagles corners

Mark Sanchez is a turnover machine, so why did he throw the ball FIFTY times against the Skins on Saturday? I know that any Eagles QB will have his attempts inflated because of the sheer number of plays that the Eagles run, but that’s insane. The Eagles are gonna finish the season with a winning record and watch a losing team from the NFC South host a playoff game, and you know what? It’s fine. I have no problem with that. The Eagles had plenty of chances to win that division, but their corners are DREADFUL and they had Sanchez throwing the ball more than Warren Moon. They’re getting precisely what they deserve.

HERO: Tony Romo and Dez Bryant

I hate the Cowboys and enjoy watching them lose. HOWEVER... if they can keep this run going all the way to the Super Bowl and win it, a very small and deeply buried part of my soul will be happy that Tony Romo finally got his due. He’s more accurate than any Cowboys QB has ever been. And he has now thrown for more yards than any other QB in Cowboys history. Quarterback is the most important position in sports and yet, at the same time, there are so many elements of a team’s success that a quarterback cannot control: defense, coaching, pass protection, etc. Tony Romo is a very good quarterback, but he is also a talisman of the past decade of Cowboys failures. Every shitty offensive line, every injured running back, every Jerry Jones impulse purchase... all of that gets filtered through Romo. And of course, Romo can’t blame any of those outside influences for his team’s shortcomings, because that is not leadership. He is that rare athlete who is both brilliant and—without a title—a walking argument for and against the existence of clutchitude.

So it would be nice if he won a title and shut those arguments down completely. And with Dez Bryant on his side—Dez seems to be twice the size of any other player on the field—maybe he will.

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VILLAIN: Dominic Raiola

Ah, now THERE’S the undisciplined, moronic Lions that I’ve missed so deeply. Somewhere, Jim Schwartz is nodding in approval.

HERO: Odell Beckham, Jr.

In the past eight games alone, Beckham has eight touchdowns and over a THOUSAND yards receiving. I watched all of Randy Moss’ rookie year, and I never thought I would see anyone quite like Moss again, but I was wrong. Beckham is a god. He’s doing all the shit Moss did, only he has better hands (!) and he’s somehow more versatile. Only Tom "Old Man Withers" Coughlin could find anything to complain about. Can we airlift Beckham onto a playoff team? We could put him on the Arizona roster and make the playoffs a fair fight.

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